"Both left and right agree that there's something seriously wrong with our public education system. Our children are actually worse off when they leave the system than when they enter it." -Campaign for America's Children, 2000

"I support school choice. If the neighborhood school is failing in its basic mission, parents and teachers don't need more excuses. They need answers...A parent with options is a parent with influence." -Presidential candidate George W. Bush, 2000

"I do not see any way to achieve a good future for our children more effectively than debating together and working together on how we educate the next generation. Children may be about 20 percent of the population, but they are 100 percent of the future." -David Tyack, educational historian, 2001

"We have a great national opportunity - to ensure that every child, in every school, is challenged by high standards,...to build a culture of achievement that matches the optimism and aspirations of our country." -President George W. Bush, 2000

"Americans typically want to aquire political values such as loyalty to the nation, a belief in the rule of law and the constitution...They also want students to incorporate, and practice, the tenents of the American dream itself...Typically, the best teachers, the smallest classes, and the most resources go to the high groups, and to mainstream or English-speaking classes...Well-off or white parents usually manage to ensure that their children obtain the benefits of this structure; poor and non-Anglo parents hae a much harder time doing so." -Jennifer Hochschild and Nathan Scovronick, 2003

"We've never aspired to be average here. If our costs are a little high, it reflects the fact that we want our children to be able to compete." -Parent from a wealthy school district, 1999

"More money is not the only thing that urban students need to be able to compete, but it is surely one thing. Money pays for the people who educate, it pays for the things they need to do their job, and it pays for decent, safe facilities in which they can do it...wealthier parets are tempted to focus on their own children, and that can submerge the promise of the American dream of equal opportunity from one generation to the next." -Jennifer Hochschild and Nathan Scovronick, 2003

"Both parties have been talking about education for quite a while. It's time to come together to get it done, so that we can truthfully say in America: No child will be left behind." -President George W. Bush, 2001

 

 

 

 

 

 

Information from this page was obtained from the book The American Dream and the Public Schools by Jennifer Hochschild and Nathan Scovronick. Copyright 2003.